The Pax Silica initiative is a US-led economic security alliance that aims to integrate the Philippines into a global artificial intelligence (AI) and semiconductor supply chains. It involves a planned 1,619-hectare economic security zone in New Clark City within the Luzon economic corridor. The plan is to reduce participating nations’ dependence on overseas supply chains (read China).

Its proponents including the Board of Investments and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority are pushing the project as a high value tech hub. But labor groups, environmentalists and indigenous communities (Aetas) have raised concerns over resource exploitation, water and land usage and deeper alignment with US and Israeli supply chains.

These concerns are valid in the face of what is happening in AI centers within the United States. These enormous facilities run 24 hours a day, consume large amounts of energy enough to power a city to power servers and cooling systems. The new generation of AI data centers would consume 1-4 gigawatts of electricity. It will require building of new dedicated power plants that will consume huge amounts of fuel oil that will emit large amounts of pollutants (carbon, methane and others). Otherwise, they have to draw on existing power plants that are already struggling to supply domestic, industrial and commercial demands.

Ai data centers require huge amounts of water (1-5 million gallons a day) for cooling. Already, data centers in Florida, Colorado and Indiana are depleting water supplies, triggering legal action in affected communities.

If the Pax Silica initiative becomes a reality in the Philippines, we will most likely see the same issues plaguing the communities where AI data centers are located. Our electricity grid is already strained to the maximum with rotating brownouts. Adding new power plants for AI data centers will increase air pollution unless we insist on clean energy sources.

Our water situation is likewise strained with dams already below ideal operating levels, threatened even more by a looming Super El Niño phenomenon. Consumers will have to pay even more for already-high power rates and water because these high demand AI centers will negotiate for lower rates for bulk use, shifting the costs to households already burdened by high rates. They should be required to set up their own water facilities, perhaps desalination plants, for their own use.

What about the indigenous tribes who have a right to their ancestral homelands? Can these data centers be set up in other places away from these original settlers? Or if they will be displaced, will they be given their own lands elsewhere?

These data centers will occupy huge tracts of farmlands when we are already struggling with food security. Loss of farming lands will strain our food supply even more leading to more importation. Will there be measures to upscale food production elsewhere?

Then, there is the issue of rare earths which are essential to the manufacture of electronics required for data centers. Since China produces 90% of rare earths, there will likely be a push to develop mineral resources locally, which means renewed destructive mining activities that will lead to deforestation, loss of indigenous plant and animal species which could be possible sources of new drugs, soil erosion, landslides and massive flooding due to loss of forest cover.

We’re already besieged with many mining operations even in protected areas that operate either under the radar or with the tacit permission of local environmental authorities. Corruption has always attended these operations due to strict environmental legal provisions which are skirted thanks to millions of pesos exchanging hands. This more lucrative prospect will likely breed more corruption. The ordinary Filipino stands to suffer from environmental degradation leading to flooding, landslides, poisoned rivers and destroyed farms.

If Pax Silica will come to fruition, we have to make sure it addresses all these issues and more.

Will it be beneficial to majority of the populace, or will it just enrich already fat bank accounts of businessmen and corrupt politicians? Will the promised job creation for hundreds of thousands of jobs be for high value jobs or just the usual assembly production leaving the higher value work like research, product design and patents outside the country?

There is the unsettling thought that all these activities could just be the prelude to manufacture of drones, surveillance systems, weapons and other war logistics that will supply the US war machine and lead the Philippines into a military confrontation with other countries, particularly China.

All these issues need to be addressed even before the deal is signed in November. What is worrisome is though it will contain all the safeguards against these possibilities, that our politicians and bureaucrats will bend the law and make a mockery of rules and regulations as they have been doing in the past.

Pax Silica or not?